In her time as a New York City public-school teacher, Miriam Altman (pictured, left), 28, picked up on a worrying trend: Parents often didn't know whether their child showed up in class or not, and schools that were attempting to communicate with parents weren't tracking who was contacted and who wasn't. And without a stronger school-parent partnership, the students were suffering.

So she and parent advocate Alexandra Meis (pictured, right), 29, came up with a solution that became Kinvolved, a company they founded in 2012. Its service is twofold: It offers a mobile-friendly application that allows teachers and parents to communicate directly while gathering data on absenteeism rates and the effect of parental involvement, and it provides educators-turned-consultants to schools to help them cut absenteeism.

About 200 schools around the country have contracted for the service for the upcoming school year (for a total of $300,000 in revenue), up from a little more than 100 last year. Ms. Altman plans on an additional 200 contracts, priced on a sliding scale, before the end of 2015.